It's been a while since my friend and I released a game but we've been pretty much grinding out the last bits for our next game Elthinia for iOS which should be ("should be" heh) done in about 6 weeks or so. We're a 2-man team from Hawaii that handles everything ourselves from the top to the bottom, we've known each other since childhood and have been playing RPGs even longer heh. I wanted to post up here at TouchArcade and start spreading the word since we're getting close to finishing this crazy-long project.

The long and skinny of it all:Elthinia is a JRPG-style game coming out for iOS which encapsulates a lot of what my friend and I really love about the genre: A fully fleshed out fantasy world to explore, lots of things to discover, both big and small, and an engaging storyline that we'll be updating as time goes on.

04.30.214:
From our most current build architecture, I used my wife's iPhone to record mine being played since we can't find a(n affordable) solution to recording the game outside of the simulator, which only gives us about 15-20fps. You can see that the game pretty much stays at 60fps the whole time:

Okay now for a few game features :
(Edited on 04.30.2014 to reflect current game system standings, hope this is okay ^_^)

An expansive and evolving storyline : We have the story with a strong core, beginning to end, but have it so we can always develop it even further; I've actually plotted out a lot more than our initial release plans for and would like to put it into Elthinia as a continuing story. This gives us the chance to release a game as a stand alone experience with the option available to enrich the game and story even more once it's all done. edit: This is still good to go, I just hope I have all the dialogue tagged correctly

Two major overworld zones to explore with a cache of dungeons to delve into and more on the way : We're aiming to release more and more continents (and all that comes with them) over the coming months and possibly years if given the chance Two are set, if we can squeeze in a third that'd be awesome. edit:We're still hoping to have both in ver1.00, we had some memory juggling we had to do once we fully populated the primary world map so some of the second area isn't fully accessible just yet. If anything we'll release 1.00 with a full overworld + a good section of the second zone (which is underground, with parts above.. ground..hehe) and then update it soon after release with more of the second zone. So that'll be more like 1.0.5 with 1.1 being our larger patch with the next full world zone.

Guild System : Acquire guild members for your 4-man party, enlist new companions in your travels and adventures and slot in whoever you want. You'll have 3 to start and pick up more soon after the game begins so you can start playing around with the characters earlier.edit: Oops, this should be 2 starting members, although you pick up your 3rd *very* soon after the game starts so it's pretty close

Open Dual Class System : Mix and match your favorite character classes to tailor to your play style and each character's core abilities. Each class contributes stat adjustments and as a character uses a class more in combat they earn more points to spend on skills. You want a Berserker-Priest? Go for it! Archer-Mage? Sure! Rogue-Beastmaster? I don't see why not edit: I just want to say how fun this is It was something I thought theoretically would be enjoyable but it's really, really interesting to mix and match class favorites.

Tons of, well, Stuff : We wanted to incorporate every single thing we could that we've enjoyed over the years of RPG gaming: You have your basic adventuring gear, stat/effect-based equipment, item sets to discover and collect, rare items, and gear enhancement through stat-boosting gems. I love digging around the world for new things and we're aiming to have a lot of new things to find in Elthinia.

Rare Monsters : I played a Hunter in World of Warcraft, *loved loved loved* the aspect of trying to find rare mobs to tame, and wanted to bring that into our game. Every zone, every area has a rare spawn or three that are roaming about or can be summoned forth if the correct item can be found, and if you are fortunate enough and have a Beastmaster in your party when you encounter a rare Beast you have the decision: Tame the beast and add it to your Guild, usable so long as a character in the party is a Beastmaster, or do you try to slay it and get a powerful piece of gear. If you're lucky you'll be able to do both edit: This is still good to go, but the rare tame-ables are sometimes *very very* difficult to find, since we wanted to make them a sort of big reward rather than a simple collection case. Granted in the age of the internet once someone posts the how-to's of picking up rares, well, then you'll have an easier way lol

Time progression : As you adventure the time clock ticks forward and you'll see changes in the world and background to reflect that with 4 distinct times of day: Dawn, Day, Dusk, and Night. Some events and mobiles will only be out at certain times of day, we're also hoping to have items that can slow down or accelerate different times of day, like a set of Nightveil Plate armor that will slow down time progression at night and accelerate it during the day. So if there's a rare mobile that shows up only at night then you can maximize your chances of hitting that encounter... or if you just like a certain time of day you can pick up gear to lock it in longer edit: This is still holding true although not quite to the same degree since we've migrated away from random encounters. There are a few mobiles and events which only occur during specific time ranges but the variable was making the build more unstable as we added more encounter tables. There are a few in but majority of events will be static.

This has been a labor of love, many long hours spent after work chugging along, lots of coffee and not as much sleep. No matter what, we're just happy to be almost done, and hope that we can find likeminded folks to join our Guild on this fun little journey that's been many years in the making. Just wanted to share this with TA and thank you for your time

Elthinia looks very promising; I've been curious about your releases since Obsidian Rift and Arena Slayer but couldn't ever get a good understanding of the game mechanics so never took the plunge. Will Elthinia be primarily combat or will there be world exploration? A more detailed video would be great.

@undeadcow, it was interesting what we learned over the last couple years working on our games; Obsidian Rift was definitely a 'first attempt' at a game with tons and tons of flaws while Arena Slayer suffered from a lack of solid direction (and some missteps), but Elthinia is where we've been applying all those lessons we learned.

The game is a bit more combat than exploration, a little dungeon grindier than it is finding/discovering new things, but there's a lot here and there of the latter. I just finished a map object that is unreachable when you first find it but a lot later in the game you have a chance to go there and find out more about the lore behind it. The game will have a lot of small things like that and will try to reward you for remembering previous places you've been with hopefully worthwhile rewards

@bigred447uk, as soon as we've finalized our UI assets and overworld sprite I'll post a shot of it. Right now we actually have Samuel from Obsidian Rift as our stand-in for our overworld sprite The overworld itself is a tile-based map, similar to our layout in Obsidian Rift; it doesn't offer smooth scrolling, instead it uses tile-by-tile movement, but every single step is automatically saved so you just about never have to worry about losing your progress if your battery dies or someone calls you or your 21 month-old son sneaking his hand in to press the home key.

I'm glad to hear that you enjoy hunting rares and going for gear, it's something that's stuck with me for a long time. I really wanted a lot of things built into this game that I've enjoyed over the years, hunting the esoteric and powerful being one of them.

Thank you again for the kind words and interest, I'll post up more screens and an extended video as soon as I can!

Okee dokee, we finally had a chance to hammer out everything for the overhead view (well just about, we're still missing a couple small UI elements but majority of the work for that view is done I believe) and we have a short video showing some of the overhead movement + basic combat.

4-frame animation for our overhead view character. I'm no animator by any major stretch of the term so in order to get this done we figured on just having our main character animated, I mean she'll be with you the entire time of the game anyways

A few more shots, showing some of the time transitions

Rare spawn you can tame:

Another rare rare you can acquire, this one I believe is only at night (and actually not in this zone heh, just wanted to bring up encounter, forgot which area I was in at the time):

We have a lot of abilities with status effects, different buffs and debuffs that are built into skills and sometimes equipment, too:

Thanks again for checking this out, if you have any questions I'll try my best to answer them ^_^

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